Cloning The Mind
by SideshowJazz1
Summary: Crossover with "Family Guy" and taking an idea from the 6teen ep "Employee Of The Month". When Meg's parents are done for child abuse, she is split up from her brothers and sent to a foster family in Canada. When she gets a job at the Khaki Barn and proves to be a hard worker, but terrible at talking to the customers, Chrissy decides to, um, 'help' her...
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Okay, so I was on TV Tropes, when I saw this Fridge Horror thing about _6teen,_ based on the episode "Employee Of the Month" when Chrissy attempts to brainwash Nikki into being the perfect Khaki Barn employee. The site theorized that Kristen and Kirsten may have had that happen to them and just didn't have friends to snap them out of it, which would explain why they can't seem to think for themselves and why they attach themselves to Nikki when Chrissy leaves for an episode. It even suggests that Chrissy SHOULD have been brainwashed, but pretends that she already thinks that way to stop someone from the higher powers doing it to her. Well, I was thinking, what if I wrote a story about that?**

 **Then I thought of Meg from _Family Guy._ She needs a new life. The Khaki Barn needs a new employee now that Nikki's moved away. Put them together, and you've got this! And I decided to make Meg seventeen here, since I don't remember her turning eighteen but I remember her seventeenth birthday (her parents couldn't remember how old she was turning).**

 **Disclaimer: I own nothing from _Family Guy_ or _6teen._**

" _If someone from the outside world could see the way you treat me, you would be in jail!"_

The eldest Griffin child heard her own words ringing inside her head, that day she'd blown up at her family. It wasn't wrong, what she'd said, but she'd climbed down and apologized at the end, thinking that the only way to keep her family together was to resign herself to the fact that she would always be their punching bag.

But now Meg Griffin knew better. When it got down to it, she deserved better. No one deserved to be a punching bag, and now, she had ten months of her life left until she became an adult. And she had just given evidence against her father, for child abuse. It wasn't just the way he'd hurt her, either.

Chris was just a much a victim as she was, Meg knew. The time Peter attempted to marry him for money was proof of that. She looked over at her little brother, who was at the front of the court with her. He was crying, because he knew that they were going to be taken away from their parents. Meg wasn't crying – she had already accepted this, and was sure it would be for the best. She still felt a little bit sad, but there was no way she was going to lose her composure. Not here, not in front of these people.

Lois could have stayed out of the case, if she'd wanted, and kept raising the family on her own, but when Peter had first been arrested, she'd broken down and insisted that she was guilty too. Meg respected her for that, at least. Although, she'd tried to backtrack and put a good fight when the lawmen took their children away. If she hadn't already condemned herself, treating Stewie like a cloth in a tug-of-war was enough.

And on that note, Meg looked down at her baby brother, who was on her lap, taking in everything that was going on silently. Stewie wasn't really a baby anymore, but in a way, he was the nicest to her in her whole family. Mainly because he didn't talk to her, but he was always pleased when she took care of him.

The courtscene ended after Peter's sentence was announced, and the man was led away. Lois was taken away too, tears in her eyes as she tore away to catch one last glimpse of her daughter and sons.

The kids' social worker, Kyle, stood up, trying to give them a sympathetic smile. "Come on, kids. We've already found places for all three of you."

It was only when they were outside when he dropped the bombshell. "The only thing is, we're going to have to split you up."

Chris burst into fresh tears. "No! I already lost Mom and Dad! I don't wanna lose my brother and sister, too!" He tried to hug Meg, but she wouldn't let him.

"Chris, I'd be leaving home in ten months anyway." she reasoned. "Nothing will really have changed. And...even if I'm not here, I'll still be your sister. Although I guess you probably don't want me to be." She mumbled the last part, her eyes downcast.

Chris kept sobbing. "No! I do want you to stay my sister, Meg! I just want you to stay with me for a while."

Stewie didn't cry at all. He simply looked up at his sister and said "Well, I am disappointed to be separated from you, but we barely talk, so...there's not really going to be much of a difference, is there?"

Anyway, as Kyle explained, they didn't have to split up all of them. "Meg, we found a foster family that could take Stewie and Chris, but we had to search for a long time for a family who would take a seventeen-year-old. The trouble is...they live in Canada."

So after a few days, Meg had to say goodbye to her brothers and take a plane north, to the middle of Canada. Although she didn't know it, there was another plane, just leaving her destination, carrying a girl who had only just switched off her phone after calling her boyfriend to let him know she'd decided not to break up with him.

Meg didn't know this girl, nor would she ever know this girl. She would never know what she was getting into. All she knew was that she was leaving Rhode Island, and she didn't know if she really wanted to go back when she came of age.

Her new foster family seemed nice, though. They'd already adopted a little girl a few years younger than Chris, who greeted Meg by sticking out her tongue and then asking her "Do you keep your brains from coming out with your hat?" but apart from that, it was a much better place than the one Meg had come from. At least no one told her to shut up at least five times a day, or asked her who let her back in the house, or mistook her for a boy.

For the first week of the summer holidays, Meg just started to get to know her surroundings. There was a mall just ten minutes' bus trip or drive away, and a few times, she just went there and wandered around, since it was much bigger than any of the malls in Quahog.

Things were good for a while, actually. Meg felt better. She stopped cutting herself and changed her style, swapping her skullcap and pink T-shirt for a star hairclip and a white spaghetti strap T-shirt that enhanced her figure a little.

But the summer holidays had started, and Meg couldn't just sit around for the rest of June, as well as July and August. She had to do something.

"Why don't you try getting a job?" her foster dad suggested. "There's always shops that want help in the mall."

Meg thought about it the whole day after he suggested it. She looked at all the teens working there. She thought about it when she bought a burger from the cute guy with the dreadlocks, and when she passed the sports shop with a girl about her age at the till. She thought about it when she saw the girl at the lemon-shaped drinks stand blending something fruity, and she thought about it every time she passed a shop with a teen working in it.

"All right." she said aloud. "I'll get a job in the mall. It can't be that hard. If everyone else can do it, why can't I?"

 **Poor Meg. She doesn't know what she's in for. At least, once she does, I'm giving her a break. Now she needs that.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Let's get back to the mall! Oh, and by the way, I'm not going to portray Meg as ugly. In this fic, she's how she looks in the show – chubby and underdeveloped for her age, but pretty much average in looks.**

Meg tried a lot of places at the mall before she found the right one. Hardly anyone would take her. Finally, she found the place.

There was a vacancy displayed on the window, and inside, there were tons of fashionable clothes.

A blonde wearing a blue bandanna was standing just inside. "Welcome to the Khaki Barn!" she chirped as a customer walked in. "Have a khaki day!"

Meg shyly approached her. "Um...I was...just wondering about the vacancy...for an employee..." She was very awkward. Years of being unpopular in every sense of the word did that. But she was growing up, and she knew that she had to try to work past it.

"Oh!" The blonde girl looked shocked for a moment, but then smiled. "Just a moment!" She flew off, and returned with a girl who had slightly darker streaked hair.

"Hi." She smiled at Meg and held out her hand. "I'm Chrissy, the manager. If you want the job, could you please just step into the back so I can ask you a few questions?"

"Sure!"

The Khaki Barn didn't have very high standards. It helped to be blonde and interested in clothes, but Chrissy had already employed an individualist who tried to sell as little as possible and took breaks whenever she felt like it. The young manager instantly recognized Meg's desparation to be accepted, and knew that she would work hard. She hired the brunette on the spot, and introduced her to Kristen (the girl who'd been at the door) and Kirsten (who looked just like Kristen except she had a ponytail instead of a bandanna).

"Welcome to the Khaki Barn team!" the three girls chorused.

Meg felt a bit choked up by the girls' enthusiastic welcome. "Thanks," she said huskily, "for giving me a chance."

"Well, you can't be as bad as our last employee!" Kirsten said optimistically. "As long as you actually DO something, we can count ourselves lucky!"

"Kirsten!" hissed Kristen. "Ix-nay on the itching-bay about Ikki-nay."

Meg pretended to ignore the comment about this Nikki. It wasn't like it was important to her. She just watched the way Kristen and Kirsten were folding sweaters, and began to copy.

"Wow!" Kirsten exclaimed. "How did you get that down so fast? That's perfect, isn't it, Chrissy?"

Chrissy smiled at Meg. "It looks like we really lucked out when we hired you."

Meg smiled back, wanly. She wasn't used to getting those kind of compliments, especially not from blondes as pretty as these three. She just ducked her head and pretended to be absorbed in folding the sweaters. It didn't help that, as she admitted to herself, she thought Kristen was kind of hot.

Although to be fair, none of the girls looked like the model she saw in the change rooms, who looked strangely familiar. But then, she wasn't attracted to the model. She looked more like the way Meg would love to look – short, platinum blonde hair, skinny and most of all, confident. Yeah, that's who she wanted to be.

When she got back that evening, the first thing her foster mom said was "How did the job searching go?"

"It was good." Meg answered. "I got hired at the Khaki Barn. The girls there are really nice."

"Well, that's good." her foster mom said. "So you're making friends at the mall?"

Meg shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe they want to be friends, maybe they don't."

As the days passed, the novelty of Meg working at the Khaki Barn started to wear off. The others liked her much better than Nikki, but her awkwardness and inability to talk to the customers started to annoy them. The nicest thing the girls could say is that Meg was quiet, efficient and neat, but she was useless at customer service. Even after Chrissy had given her a rundown of where everything was twice, she still mumbled when a customer asked her for help and didn't look at them. And it didn't help that (although none of them noticed) she was becoming more and more attracted to Kristen, who was not only the prettiest, but slightly nicer than Kirsten and didn't have the authority to be bossy like Chrissy. She started to blush if Kristen so much as directed one comment at her.

"This is a disaster." Chrissy murmured to her friends. "She works really well, but if she can't talk to the customers, what's the point of having her at the cash register?"

"You could just have her folding and things." Kirsten suggested. "She's good at that."

Kristen shook her head. "But you and me always do that together! I can't talk to her like I can to you! I'd miss you!"

Kirsten nodded. "I didn't think of that! I'd miss you too!"

"Girls, we need to be more professional." Chrissy said sharply. "The point is, we can't have Meg at the cash register, because she is going to turn off all our customers. Plus,her fashion sense really isn't meshing with ours."

There was a pause. Then Kristen spoke up. "Chrissy, remember that time you made Nikki Employee of the Month?"

Chrissy didn't get it at first. "Yes," she said impatiently, "As a way of giving her responsibility in order to turn her into one of... _oh_." She paused for a moment. "But it didn't work on Nikki."

"Nikki was majorly resistant." Kristen pointed out. "And her friends thought she was acting weird. Meg doesn't have any friends."

Chrissy nodded. "Kristen, you're a genius!" A sly smile crossed her face. "I don't think I need to do anything to make her feel like she's needed, though. A little time in that elite room, and she'll be ours!"

You see, Nikki hadn't been the first to be brainwashed in that elite lounge. It wasn't exactly that Chrissy's two best friends had been individualists, but they hadn't been bubbly blondes when they first started at the Khaki Barn. They hadn't loved it, either. They hadn't hated it – they just hadn't loved it. Neither of them remembered their visit, but they knew what it did.

The room was designed for the specific purpose of brainwashing employees into Khaki clones. Chrissy had figured things out for herself early on and made herself act like a Khaki clone in order to keep her own mind. But Kristen and Kirsten had both been brainwashed. Chrissy loved her two best friends, but she had to admit they were a little boring, and they didn't seem to be able to think for themselves any more.

" _Still,"_ she thought, " _Better to have an employee who only thinks of this place than an employee who can't talk to the customers."_ Momentarily, Chrissy wished she had a way to set the brainwashing room so it removed slightly less from its victims. But in her mind, she was doing the right thing. Meg wanted acceptance, and the Khaki Barn wanted customers to come back again. Everybody won, right?

She knew she'd have to start by reassuring the girl that she was doing a good job. Nothing like a little reassurance. Besides, if this ploy worked, Chrissy thought, Meg could become part of their little clique when it got back to school time. She'd probably be glad to have friends.

She walked over to the brunette. "Hey, Meg. Just wanted to let you know, you're doing a great job for someone who's barely been here for two weeks."

Chrissy got the standard shy reaction. A curtain of short dark hair swung over Meg's face and she muttered out "Thanks."

"You know, you could use some more self-confidence." Chrissy said gently. "Notice how Kristen greets all of the customers? All you need to do is smile a bit more and speak up a bit."

Meg looked at Kristen, blushing all over again. But she managed to put on a smile, and parroted the phrase: "Welcome to the Khaki Barn! Have a khaki day!"

Chrissy grinned at her. "Just speak a little louder, and you've got it." She smirked to herself when Meg went back to focusing on folding sweaters. This would be far too easy.

 **Ever wondered why Chrissy acts smarter than Kristen and Kirsten, and how in the world Kristen got a higher IQ score than Nikki? Well, if Kristen and Kirsten got brainwashed and Chrissy didn't, that would make sense, right?**

 **Thank you for the favourites, but please could you review, too, please?**


	3. Chapter 3

**Okay. The final stage. Thanks for reviewing, Silver Writer 0927 and Bloodylilcorpse.**

Meg improved a little bit after the girls tried to give her some more confidence, but not enough to make them give up on the elite lounge idea. A month of perfect behind-the-scenes work and terrible customer service was enough.

"We think you're doing amazingly," Chrissy told Meg, lying smoothly, "And so we thought you deserved to be part of the Khaki Barn's inner circle. Why don't you try taking a break in the elite lounge?"

And Meg, unaware of Chrissy's real plans, took the bait. The lounge itself was fine, although Meg tried on some of the makeup (and looked quite a bit better with it on).

Then she went to the elite bathroom for the first time, and the Khaki Barn ads came on. She got scanned. The scanner found nothing wrong with Meg's appearance, because it didn't breach the store's fashion policy. But it kept repeating everything the Barn stood for – blending into the crowd, style, flattering the customers, being outgoing and chipper...it drummed every single thing into Meg's mind, the words becoming bigger and bigger until shy little Meg went back into the employee lounge and found that besides the makeup, a pink baby-T and skinny capri jeans were waiting for her. She paused, glancing down at her loose jeans and top.

Then the words of the ads kept flashing into her mind. She barely noticed taking off her old clothes and dressing in the new ones, same as the other girls. Then she pulled her dark hair into a side ponytail and secured it with her star hairclip. The final touches were the makeup in the lounge. Lipgloss, mascara, and a little bit of eyeliner created what looked like a brunette Khaki sister.

When Meg came out of the room, Kristen was the first to notice her. "Hey, you look great!" she smiled.

Meg felt a twinge of weirdness. She wasn't sure why, but had she been more aware, she would have realized it was because she wasn't attracted to the blonde any more. She had been transformed into a friendly, pretty, outgoing, blending-in slight airhead. But she didn't know that. She didn't remember the brainwashing, because it had taken full effect. She knew how she used to think, but she couldn't keep that frame of mind. She found it easier to think in the new way the brainwashing had conditioned her to think.

A customer approached Meg. "Excuse me, but could you please find me this top in a smaller size?"

"Just one moment." Meg said, her voice now clear, confident and friendly. She found the top, and after the woman asked her opinion, she said "You look amazing!" She rang up the till and even finished with a chirpy "Have a Khaki day!"

Even Chrissy was a little shocked by how fast the conditioning had sunk in. "She was only in there five minutes and she's like a new person!" she whispered to her friends.

"Isn't that what you wanted?" Kirsten asked.

"Well, yes, but I didn't think it would sink in this fast! She must be more desperate to fit in than I thought."

"It's a good thing." Kristen added. "She kept looking at me weird, it was creeping me out. Ten minutes ago, if I'd spoken to her, she would have given me weird eyes. But just now, she smiled in a normal way."

Chrissy relaxed a little bit. She'd noticed the way Meg had been staring at Kristen too, but she'd known what was going through the girl's head. It wouldn't have helped her fit into the Khaki Barn at all, or even at school.

She still felt a little guilty though. " _Sorry I had to do this, Meg. But it's not just what's best for the store – it's what's best for you. Besides, you've got us as your friends now. The Khaki girls stick together."_ she thought. Back when she'd tried to do it to Nikki, she hadn't felt guilty at all. But Meg was so different – vulnerable and shy, not intentionally lazy and unapologetically self-assured like Nikki had been. Chrissy had to keep reminding herself that conditioning her new employee was more to protect her from social death, as well as make it more socially acceptable to be seen with her.

When senior year started, four girls could be seen walking through the gates, laughing and chatting. All of them had blonde hair, and all wore pink baby-Ts and capri jeans. Yes, Meg had blonde hair. Kirsten had invited her to a "OMG Senior Year" sleepover for the group, and offered to dye her hair so she looked like a true Khaki sister. She'd also lost some weight and gained the same slight body shape the other girls shared. Plus, she'd swapped her glasses for contacts, no longer hiding her face behind the gigantic frames she used to have. In fact, the only way to tell Meg apart from the three girls was her hair and the fact that she was the shortest of the four.

"I was, like, _so_ nervous about starting here." Meg confided to her three friends as they walked through the gates. "I was up all night worrying that it was going to be a repeat of my old school – I was, like, invisible there."

"Oh, no way will you be invisible around here." Kirsten assured her. "Everyone knows us, and you look so much better now than you used to! Trust me, the school is gonna love you!"

And Meg's life was better than it had ever been in Rhode Island. No one but the other girls knew that Meg's real personality had been buried. She was another one of those girls Nikki had referred to as the "Clones", unaware that there was more truth in her name than she thought.

And Meg? She would never know that her personality change hadn't been because of her own choices. She was happier the way she was. After all, what was better? Being shy, awkward and friendless through no fault of her own – or having three best friends who thought exactly like her?

Put that way, being a clone wasn't so bad. And as the Clone Meg Griffin took over, the old Meg Griffin claimed defeat and disappeared completely.

 **I don't know if my conflicting feelings about Meg becoming a clone came out there. Meaning, I'm pretty sure they did. But that's the end! So what did you think?**


End file.
